Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Bad Science 101

"Tyrannosaurus rex would have been able to outrun a footballer, according to computer models used to estimate running speeds of dinosaurs.

The work used data taken directly from dinosaur fossils, rather than referring to previous work on modern animals.

The study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that T. rex had a top running speed of 8m/s (18mph).

The fastest dinosaur was a small, bipedal and carnivorous species.

This animal, called Compsognathus was about the size of a chicken, and could run at 18m/s (40mph).

The only modern bird to equal this speed is the ostrich. By comparison, an athlete in a 200 m sprint can reach a top speed of 12 metres per second (27 miles per hour).

T. rex's speed of 8m/s (18mph) is fractionally quicker than the average professional footballer."

The average footballer can't stay close to the average American playing a real sport, nor could a carrion-eater as T-Rex have needed speed so it probably did not have speed. It's called weight to stride ratio, and a well fed Tyrannosaur was most likely far too heavy for sprinting all that much but remember; this is Brit "science" so it means less than nothing. They certainly didn't walk around all bent over like the modern junk-science'ers would have you believe, and if you want to drive them to stark raving blither then simply ask why an animal would switch to becoming a biped only to hunker as if it still had 4 legs instead of 2. And psst...animals who rely upon speed as the primary method of flourishing do so on all 4's. Height is good for sniffing the air and looking towards the horizon. Lousy way to drag along 10 or so tons.

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